Here are a few experiments created in Element 3D V2 with simple lighting and Ambient Occlusion. In these examples I’m using the Ray Traced AO which is a bit slower but creates very nice results. The other important setting I like to use is called “Lighting Influence” under the Physical Environment. This setting helps blend the […]

Welcome back everyone! 2015 is upon us and we are getting busy! In this exciting new tutorial we’ll be creating a fun cascading polygon using some sweet animation tricks! This technique is highly customizable so you can start experimenting now! It’s 2015 let’s push things to the next level and learn everything we can! Watch on Youtube […]

Element 3D V2 just came out this week and we’ve already been working with customers to make the plug-in better with this latest patch! Big Shout out to our development team for the fast turnaround! Check out Element 3D V2: Visit Online Store! Customers who have purchased V2: Login and download V2.0.2 Patch! PATCH DETAILS: Mac firePro GPU […]

Hey all! Back online in the new Energi studios - whew! Wanted to quickly log in and answer a few questions from folks. Thanks for your patience :-)

1. Dustin James - the camera control is mostly via expressions. It all comes down to one thing, as I said to a British lass a long time ago: It's all about the wiggle, baby. Anyway, that's another story... Using the wiggle expression on your camera position and/or orientation adds a whole dimension to your work. Animate the camera moves using keyframes as per normal, easing and such (I also 99% of the time, turn Auto Orientation to OFF, to enable easier rotation animation and to stop AE looking at the center of my 3D world), but then ADD an expression to the position and use wiggle to randomize the values between the keyframes. That's how the handheld look is created. You can also do the same with the Focus Distance for depth of field, but I would recommend applying a Slider expression control to a blank layer and tying the expression to that slider, so you can ease the wiggle up and down with keyframes easily.

Hopefully that gives you a couple of hints? :-)

2. Aharon Rabinowitz - you are always the gentleman, my friend. Although daisies and cinnamon had me rolling on the floor in laughter!

3. Filipe Montero - the VPE export to AE is ONLY available in Photoshop CS3 EXTENDED. The regular Photoshop CS3 doesn't have the export feature, sadly...

4. Shaun - you can turn the shadows for the lights on, and the layers to accept shadows... but nothing will work unless you tell the black-holed solid to Cast Shadows... Twirl down the Material Options for the solid layer, and set Cast Shadows to On or Only (if you want the layer to be invisible). Be sure Cast Shadows is also turned on IN the light settings. This should fix it for you :-)

5. Filipe - I learned After Effects over many years of knee-deep work... Had some great guidance from my old friend Brian Maffitt along the way too with expressions and such, but I've been using AE for 11 years now and there are still a few things that baffle me. Aharon's tutorials are a great way to learn, as of course are Andrew Kramer's, so there are so many new ways to learn now than when I started out. The Adobe Classroom in a Book only showed me about 10 things, and the rest was trial-by-fire ;-)

6. Dustin - when you went to the NRB conference, and saw Adobe showing the Vanishing Point demo, did they use a long red corridor with wooden walls, and either Hiball or Aquo logos flying down the hallway? If so, that was actually another one of my project pieces which I gave them permission to use for their demos, as their content was seriously lacking (for such an important feature)...

Alright, got to go and set up another Mac and unpack some more boxes. Hope some of this helps, glad I can be part of this community.

Hi guys, i've tried what steve did with the corridor. Everything looked great but I can't get my light to cast the shadow. I placed a black solid infront of the 3d tunnel. I then cut the middle out put a light behind it. I made sure all the layers were set right, making sure the layer recieve light option was turned off on each. I then checked the recieve shadows and went into the tunnel to find nothing had happened. I just can't understand why.

I would really enjoy it if Steve good give some handy tips about my question about the camera movements in his reel.. and the focus and all the stuff that makes it look so convincingly like a real life camera..

Hello everyone, Chris here again. Energi Design is in the middle of moving the entire studio to a new location. Steve wanted me to let you know he'll be back online Wednesday and will check in here to follow up with any other questions.

Just want to say, I've worked with Steve on a bunch of projects, and he is easily one of the most talented if not THE most talented designer I've ever worked with. He's also a really great guy, and smells a bit like daisies and cinnamon. (OK, I made that very last part up).

Steve thanks for the tips and your contributions to knowledge base of the AE and design community. I am constantly floored by the stuff you produce.

I really would like to watch the presentation but the only way I can watch it is if it were up for download and I don't any way to download it so I'm just hoping this presentation will still be up for viewing by the time I return home from Iraq which is really getting on my nerves now. Just hearing all you talk about this is making me want to see it even more but with this Iraqi net over here, its near impossible to view the video so if anyone finds a download or something for this video please give a shout out or something so that I can view it as well. Thanks Andrew for posting the link and all even tho I can't view it atm I'm still excited just reading everyone's response to it.

Thank you soo much, Andrew for this site!! I'm 17 and watch all your tuts like 50 times!
I discovered you last spring, just at random, and this site opened me up to the world of AE. As I kept getting interested in this, I became more aware of video production in general. Now I have bought all your products, bought proffessional video equipment, and am going into a career in video/motion graphics!! Dude, you virtually changed my life!

-Thanks, and keep it up, people WILL watch... BTW I saw Evolution used in an internationally broadcast (Satellite Dish) commercial/promo for an upcoming Rugby match!

I had the pleasure of watching that presentation live at NAB. It's one of the few videos that i've gone back and watched a half dozen times...i love it..it's good stuff..and i'm glad to hear he used your stuff Andrew.

I really enjoyed your tricks you shared in that tutorial. I enjoyed your promo reel. I have been wondering for a while how to control the camera the way you do in some of those shots. I'm talking about the zooming/focus/movement. The way you do it makes the camera look like it is real.. in such that a person is controlling it. I would appreciate some tips on how you do this.. like weather you keyframe it, or if its expressions, etc... Thanks, djames04@gmail.com

@ Andrew

I went to the NRB (Nation Religious Broadcasting Convention) and in an After Effects session by Adobe, I shared with everyone videocopilot.net. Twice a Day for 3 days... so much love! They two showed the Vanishing technique..

Hi guys, I really injoyed watching the presentation, It got my juices flowing. Ever since I saw the presentation I've been looking all over for a really cool looking concrete hallway but with no luck, I know I could build one from scratch in AE's but I really want to try it with a good photo, the hi res ones at iphotostock are too expensive. anyone by chance happen to have one. I'm a media student at college and I would love to a nice VP animation for my final project. any help would be appreciated. thanks guys, andrew thank god people like you exist to help us peeps become better at what we do. Maybe oneday i'll be teaching people AE. hah maybe in 15 years.:)

Oh, and if you visit Federico's site link above, you'll see he's also responsible for the wonderful music we had for our "Possibilities+Productivity" animation, as well as the interface and all five movies in the "Adobe Type+Motion" microsite, which has been nominated for a Webby...

If anyone feels like casting their votes for the People's Choice Award, we would love that! I'm not going to use VCP as a launch pad for that though, that's not fair or proper. All relevant links can be found on our minimal and so-in-need-of-completion Energi home page :-)

Hey all, thought I would pop back in and answer a couple of questions. So cool to see so many people enjoying the tutorial, this blog is very cool.

1. Beautiful design elements on ugly walls and only one mention: To be fair, this was our title project which used the flourishes for one specific purpose, and one mention of VCP is now all over AdobeTV...

But in addition to mentioning VCP once in each Adobe demo per day, I did also mention it twice per day over at the Artbeats booth where I was also presenting - and then after all three of those demos, I would probably have 8-10 people come over and ask me to say again where the flourishes came from... I think that was fair advertising :-) Plus no one came up and asked which software I used, so I wasn't promoting Adobe ;-P
Hopefully that returns the love, Anton :-)

2. Our demo reel is only available online right now, just for updating purposes. We don't make a reel available for download for many reasons - one being that someone sent US a demo reel last year asking for a job, and in their demo reel they had used some of OUR work from our demo reel... Yikes ;-)

3. The music. Well, our 2007 reel had music from a great colleague in New York called Federico Chieli http://h20music.com - but for 2008 we wanted something that didn't "hide" the work underneath heavy beats and such. The Amelie soundtrack was really beautiful, as is the film, and worked well for this demo. I am not happy that we have used someone else's music in this way, and we'll probably replace it soon, but for now it was perfect for NAB.

4. The accent. That was funny ;-) I'm thinking on my next NAB (it'll be my 10th anniversary of presenting there), I'll do one entire presentation in Sean Connery style, you know - Scottish accent with sh's for the s's and such. I think that would be fun! I could even work in some Indiana Jones segments:

"I'm as human as the next man."
"I wash the nexsht man..."

:-)

Thanks again Andrew for hosting the blog and making the products so cool and fun to use, and glad people are enjoying them and where they are used.

If only my Vanishing Point imports nested that well inside After Effects. Mine come in all over the place! Loads to learn in Adobe TV. Check out Jason Levine on CS3 Production Premium. Near the end of the clip he demonstrates the power of the puppet tool. Worth a watch.

Hello sir, just finished checking out clickenergi.com
very simple and neat, very pleasing to the eye, I working my way up to achieve that level of design where very little is used in a highly creative way. I love the way you guys used the VCP products too

I wanted to ask you about the background music in your demo-reel, is it something you guys create in-house or commision a music studio to do it or you got it from some where else.

back on the subject, when i used Vanishing Point with HD photo's the numbers inside AE get huge. Bit of a problem when you use Particular. Or other effects/plugins that have some kind of max number. Anyone have a good workaround?

Nice nice. I've now been into this for 6 month, and fortunately I found this page, as one of the first pages when i searched for AE tutorials. It has really helped me a lot, and made me even more interrested in video and FX editing. I'm only 17 so I've got a lot of time still to learn :D

Thx for sharing Andrew! I love your vanashing point tutorial but this one seems to be more advanced. maybe you can show us more like this, especially using vanashing point in photoshop, to use it in AE later. i can watch this presentation again but i think you would put more detail in to it. When i watch your tutorials, everything works from alone...;) Your the Master!!! ItÂ´s a littlebit like jedi knights: One Master, One Student, but in your case: One Master, a Thousand Students!
So keep up the good Work!
PS: CanÂ´t wait for the new Training DVD!
Greetings from Berlin Germany

Hi Andrew
Congratulations for your interesting product > EVOLUTION
In our country TV we see lots of usages of your products.
So i think EVOLUTION is going to be one of the best products that will use all over the world.

The shortcut for replacing the layer is when your dragging a layer to the time line I believe you hold down the option key while dragging and what ever layer you drag it onto will be replaced with the new one. The new layer will then take on the replaced layers position attributes.

Thats why he made duplicates of the layers so he wouldn't loose the original.

Mazal tov Andrew what a great shout out. I feel bad for Steve Holmes though, holy hell that crowd didn't seem into it at all. You can hear people talking in the background throughout his entire amazing presentation.

Hey all, thanks for the nice comments about our work and also the presentation I gave at NAB last week. It was my pleasure to push Evolution (and Riot Gear, featured in our reel opening) in every single session, as the collections are beautiful and help us out no end. Thanks again Andrew!

Holy carp!
If ever I needed a reason to upgrade from CS2 to CS3, this was it!!!
I am currently working on a feature film, shot entirely on bluescreen, I have been using 2d images and cutting and layering them to do what vanishing point is doing soooo much better!!! Thanx so much!!!!

@Pratik
There are two ways. ALT-drag the new layer from the project panel and drop it onto the layer you want to replace, or select the footage in the project panel and the layer in the timeline and press ALT+CTRL+/ (ALT+CMD+/ on mac)

@ Pratik,
I think that AK covers it in the AE Bootcamp (The Great Free resource that VC provided), but have the layer selected that you want to replace, ALT Click on the replacement in the project panel and drag it on to the layer you are replacing.

To be fair, there was actually a tutorial floating around on the VPE subject before I tackled it, I was just contrasting it with the 3D projection technique. Steve definitely took it to the next level with multiple room faces so that was interesting to see so many wall contours.

Great tut from Steve. Funny how you've already covered that VPE technique here at VCP, plus the fact that Evolution is all over the place... Wow! Major league kudos to you AK. Hopefully the exposure will translate into $$$ for you guys as well! Peace!